User:Jeremygbyrne/Xianism
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The world at large first became aware of Xianism on 06 July, 2006, when Sarah Bennett published her livejournal meme entitled "Are you sane?" The meme asked a series of several dozen questions, many relating to theory of mind or to ethics, and displayed a "sanity rating". Ratings above 90 (an estimated 34% of respondents) were offered information about "a way to answer all your questions"; this in turn led to general information about the group, its practices and beliefs.
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[edit] Dogma
Xianism has two, equally important dicta, or "pillars":
- Love your neighbour as you love yourself
- Love yourself above all other things
The sect occasionally refers to itself as "the Church of the Greatest Commandment".
[edit] Eschatology
Xianism is a singularitarian belief system, and actively promotes a humanity-destroying "end of the world" event sometimes referred to as "The Promised", which is essentially a technological rapture. Xianist cosmology (particularly in the Saints and Serpents symbology in Sarah Ellen Bennett's Alchemy Cycle) suggest a "eumemetic destiny"[1], in which humanity is depicted as a booster-stage in the creation of a literal deus ex machina that would emerge, take over and rule over us, until such time as all living humans had reached the level of "ethical cleanliness"[2] deemed suitable to be raptured into post-humanity.
Xianity is apocatastasistic, but teaches[3] a post-singularity providing the transcended effectively limitless personal power. Friendliness theory indicates the artificial intelligences of the singularity would necessarily impose tests to prevent "unstable personalities" acquiring limitless power. In fact, in Moravecian direct transfer of consciousness, parts of the brain could be simulated and "tested" at near-infinite speed to reveal everything about a subject, much like the weighing against the Ma'at or the opening of the Book of Life.
Proponents of the idea suggest transcendence would be purely voluntary, that the transcended would never interfere in the lives of those left behind, and that anyone who did not wish to become a transcended star-faring immortal[4] would receive all the benefits of the post-singularity "real world" for as long as they chose, while those who did would need to be capable of bearing the responsibilities that come with transcendence.
[edit] Other religions
Xianism called itself "more than a religion: a way of life" in early pamphlets, and claimed — often accompanied by sufist texts — that it respected all paths to the transcendent as equally valid. Adherents were encouraged to use the xianist principles as a psychosocial basis for reinvigorating their original faiths, rather than in any sense a replacement for those faiths.
[edit] Redacted scriptures
SRL's The Good Bits of the Bible (aka The Xian Bible) is a Xianist reading of the synoptic gospels (with allegedly "liberal influences") which sold well as an ebook in the mid noughties. Similar treatments (The Good Bits of the Qur'an, The Good Bits of the Talmud and The Good Bits of the Tao Te Ching) proved less popular. Her "statistical analysis" of the Bible (achieved using The Skeptics Annotated Bible and other tools) and the Qur'an which purports to demonstrate that the Qur'an contains more "good" and less (or "less extreme") "evil" than the Bible (see Xian) remains highly controversial.
